We completed primary and secondary schooling at Musaeus College,Colombo and got selected to pursue our Bachelor’s Honours in Food Science andTechnology at The University of Sri Jayewardenepura.
We completed the degree with flying colours. Nadeesha being the best student with a GPA of 4.0 and receiving 2 gold medals. Thejani being second with a GPA of 3.94. Our mother Manel Gunaratne insisted we apply for a scholarship to pursue a PhD. We wrote to a few supervisors and Professor Frank Dunshea agreed to supervise both of us. This was a dream come true moment for us as we knew how important this would be in the process of applying for a scholarship.
Our Sri Lankan degrees were recognised in Australia and we were both fortunate enough to be granted full scholarships by the Australian Government for ourPhD.
During our PhD, we both researched new ways to measure and analyse consumers’ emotional and sensory responses to chocolate in complementary research, with Thejani focusing on the impact of chocolate flavour and Nadeesha on the impact of packaging.
Our PhD research topics were:
Nadeesha Gunaratne – Implementation of non-invasive biometrics to identify effects of chocolate packaging towards consumer emotional and sensory responses
Thejani Gunaratne – Development and implementation of novel sensory evaluation procedures of consumer acceptability towards chocolate based on emotions and biometric responses.
Thejani is now a Senior Experimental Scientist (Sensory andConsumer Science) at CSIRO in Melbourne, and Nadeesha is a Research Scientist (Sensory and Consumer Products) at Amway in Los Angeles.
Being born twins is something that we are ever grateful for. We can’t imagine life without each other. We have a unique bond that’s hard to explain to other people.
The fact that we have completed all important milestones together- primary school, high school and now university - has made our lives even more enjoyable. We were eagerly waiting to attend the PhD graduation together as it means a lot to us.
We would like to take this opportunity to express our heartfelt gratitude to the University of Melbourne, the Australian government for funding, and the University of Sri Jayewardenepura and Musaeus College for all the support and guidance granted to pursue our education. Finally, we would like to thank our loving family and friends for always being there for us through thick and thin.
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